Optical addressing at the subwavelength scale

Abstract

The Green dyadic formalism is applied to the study of the optical properties of dielectric subwavelength structures integrated in coplanar geometry. We first consider homogeneous wires with high refractive index featuring subwavelength cross sections. We show that such wires may have guiding properties and that they may be coupled with a local illumination produced by a focused Gaussian beam totally reflected at the substrate interface. When excited by the focused beam, these subwavelength optical waveguides (SOW’s) provide a confined source of light that could be used to excite a single nanoscopic object. Well designed heteregeneous wires resulting from the alignment of dielectric particles separated from each other by a subwavelength distance are also found to propagate a Gaussian beam excitation over several micrometers. This propagation occurs with reasonable damping for incident beams in the visible frequency range. The computed transmission spectra of these heterowires may exhibit narrow gaps. Finally, we discuss the relation between the optical properties of the SOW and the calculated electromagnetic local density of states.